Quotes About Improvisation

I have this habit of not rehearsing a lot; I don't go on practicing my dialogues, pauses, and actions.

I've never liked rehearsing too much.

When I was at my height on TV, I was always busy - rehearsing, practising my impressions, learning new material. When that faded, I had to find another way to be creative. Houses were something to do instead. They saved me.

I like to do everything I can to avoid rehearsals, even while we're rehearsing.

It's so satisfying as a guitar player to play stuff that's related to the blues.

Have you ever taken something out of the clothes hamper because it had become, relatively, the cleanest thing?

I used to be more involved with every aspect of everything onstage. I'm way more relaxed now. It feels like anything can happen.

I used to pre-rehearse everything and then bring my pre-rehearsed performance to the set. Now, I'm learning to let it happen in the moment. American actors are much better at that than British actors. If I knew how to trust myself, I would have been much more relaxed.

I'm not very good at vacationing or relaxing or planning any of that for myself. So I'm in the habit of piggy-backing off of gigs and deciding to stay an extra day.

A lot of guitar players, in every genre, are afraid to leave space. They're afraid to leave a hole, afraid they'll fall down it or something.

Just acting on someone else's set feels like a holiday, almost.

Even last minute, you can find a great makeup artist at your local MAC store or department store makeup counter, and a lot of times they'll hook you up for free.

I'm not really premeditative in any way at all. I come up with an idea, hopefully for a film, and then I'm lucky enough to do the film.

I can only speak for myself, but you never set out to be funny. You just set out to play the scenes real, and hopefully the funny comes.

I didn't even know what a horror film was. I kind of made it up as I went along.

I am very interested in the human voice and how we use it, especially when we aren't thinking, like the kind of stuff Robert Ashley was interested in.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

It was as if I'd found myself in a performance of some extravagant, complex drama, and I didn't have a script.

If you watch young children play, you will notice that they create games, characters, situations, whole worlds in which they immerse themselves with intense concentration.

I've done a few roles in the past where people got quite worried when I started drifting away from what was written on the script. Often, they see improvisation as worrisome, because that's adding time to their day. But, in 'The Umbrella Academy,' they didn't worry too much about that, because Netflix has loads of money.

There is only so much you can do if you're pulling weight and there's nobody there to play off of. You can't have those beautiful moments with new actors who are so worried about everything else but the moment.

Even though I'll do finger warm-ups that go up and down the neck to build up my chops and dexterity, I never, ever sit around and practice the actual licks I'm gonna play live. If you do, then you'll be all worried about the complexity of getting the fingering right and everything else about it, as opposed to the feel.

I just love to sit and go, 'Let's just write a song and not worry about how it needs to be'.

Like Russell, I enjoy the fact that when I'm playing solo, if I want to do something completely spontaneous, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to cue the other musicians, or if it's something that's rehearsed.